From: John Morrice <spoon@...>
Date: 2010-12-21T10:20:30+09:00
Subject: Re: creating an object

> rating = Rating.new(:rating => params[:rating])
> 
> i can't understand what it means.

It's just a regular call to Rating.new, but it's using the special
syntax for sending a hash as an argument.

:rating is a symbol, used as the key in the hash.  It refers to
params[:rating].

Try playing with this in irb

# Tested with ruby 1.9.2
# Lets see what food is in the fridge!
def peek fridge
   puts "fridge was a #{fridge.class}"
   puts "The cheese was: #{fridge[:cheese]}"
   puts "The vegetable was: #{fridge[:vegetable]}"
end

# This is closer to the code in your problem
peek(:cheese => :cheddar, :vegetable => :leeks)

# But you can do it with hands free syntax too!
peek :cheese => :brie, :vegetable => :broccoli 

Read about this in the pickaxe
http://ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/html/tut_methods.html#UE

(or as more uncouth elements may say, RTFM)

Johnny

P.S. Whoever wrote that piece of code seems to really like the word
rating.